While I have admittedly become a fairly serious Legendary Pink Dots fan again over the last few years, I am still far from obsessive and their voluminous 2013 output was just way too much for me to keep up with.  Consequently, I thought it was probably safe to let this limited, tour-only "sister album" to The Gethsemane Option slip by me.  I was wrong, of course (and I should know better by now).  While Code Noir is not nearly as ambitious or epic as Gethsemane, it happily avoids almost all of the indulgences and excesses that plagued its sister and is much better (and more listenable) for it.

While Mars were never the most out there of the No Wave movement (they always had a strong rock’n’roll vibe on the studio recordings) but they certainly weren't the most vital to these ears. Their studio recordings, long available at this stage, offered a window into what the group were doing but the collected works were far too brief, too tame. This LP is the first of two new live recordings of the band and shows them in ferocious form. The idea of them being a weirdo rock band is exploded and forgotten; this is phenomenal music that defies categorization or comprehension.

When the studio is used as an instrument, that magic cannot always be reproduced in a live setting, on the fly, with variable acoustics and limited equipment. That's the downside of reissues like 20 Jazz Funk Greats: the album is faithfully presented, gloriously remastered, and has never sounded better, but it has also been watered down with bonus material that, in this particular case, is inessential.

As the least prolific member of Cleveland kosmische collective Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt's first widely available (and officially pressed) solo release is long overdue. Recorded over three years, and released on Kranky in late 2011, the album is a twinkling gem—an hour's worth of vintage, Berlin-style electronics and ambience.

This striking and aberrant effort originated when Mark found a forgotten four-track recording of a mangled pop song that he had made back in 1982 and decided to revert back to those more primitive recording methods.  While these songs borrow their directness and uncharacteristically raw sound from that teenaged experiment, the resultant album is still a very dense and perversely sophisticated one.  Also, it could not possibly be further from the shimmering and sublime work Mark did with Seefeel.  Instead, The Revenant Diary sounds like '90s dance pop filtered through an especially gritty, vibrant, and disturbing nightmare.

Chicago’s Number None end up reworking two tracks from their own2004 3" CDR release Nervous Climates into two newpieces via the devolutions of Iowa’s Medroxy Progesterone Acetate’sside long remixes. The similarities to the original tracks are fleetingand buried as the barren landscapes of the originals are abused andbruised into extended storms on this cassette release.

Always the serrated disco ball in the Digital Hardcore scene, Cobra Killer return with a bonkers album that walks the line between inspiration and the ridiculous. Gone are all the vocal effects and samplers and replacing them is Kapajkos, a mandolin orchestra.

This is the Brainwashed Readers Poll. Once again the Brainwashed Readers participated in the nominations and the voting rounds, and here we are with what has resulted. The writers don't all necessarily agree with the placement and rankings, but we have our last word in the comments we have provided.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the rounds and we wish everyone the best for 2012.

This year, when playing with United Bible Studies or Che Chen and Robbie Lee, Jozef van Wissem's name has taken the spotlight, even though his collaborators have made essential contributions to his music. That's reasonable enough, especially in light of Jozef's aspirations for the lute and the excellent solo records he's released throughout 2011. It's worth noting, then, that the Smegma moniker comes before Jozef's name on Suite the Hen's Teeth. Irreverent at times, but absolutely in tune with van Wissem's theoretical desires, Ju Suk Reet Meate is perhaps the best partner Jozef has yet engaged. In fact, Meate is more a foil than a collaborator, challenging van Wissem's palette rather than bending to his baroque will.

Even though the concept and imagery of frigid weather has been done time and time again within drone and ambient music, Kevin Spence's take on it is able to transcended the expectations I had and present a haunting, glacial suite of songs that radiate a frozen stillness.

Before establishing himself as a pioneer of organic electronic music via solo work and running the 12k label, Taylor Deupree was one of the leaders of the glitch sub-sub-genre of dance music. Here, three 12" singles from 2000-2001 are compiled, with a few bonus tracks, and demonstrate that even in those early days of his career, he could weave sounds together into tapestries that sound like no one else.

The nights are getting longer and we will soon be at the shortest day of the year so it is just the right time to crack out Petr Vastl’s Winter Solstice. Lunar, jet black and beautiful, this is one best realized works of Vastl’s in his career. Beginning and ending in hushed reverence, he captures the strange vibes and ethereal magic of that one special night and turns it into some of the most beguiling music that bears the name Aranos.

In the wake of the short-lived mid-2000's noise explosion, many of the genre's leading lights either moved on or began experimenting with clever ways to make dissonant chaos sound fresh again.  Swanson, formerly one half of Yellow Swans, takes a stab at the latter here by incorporating thumping 4/4 beats into his aesthetic with  intermittently bludgeoning success.  However, the album's best pieces are still those where Swanson sticks closest to his familiar terrain of blackened, brooding heaviness.

Brian Pyle received a lot of attention with 2010's Psychical (a creepy homage to schlocky slasher films), but it was much too blunt and raw for me to want to hear more than once.  He got me this time though: Crossing The Pass, By Torchlight traffics in similarly eerie and disquieting ambiance (and continues to display Pyle's love of '80s sounds and textures), but it does so in a much deeper and more nuanced way.  That may not sound like a stunning evolution, but the difference is a dramatic one.  This is a great album.

The fantastic final piece in Haigh's trilogy for Daisuke Suzuki's Siren label is now available, and, like the the second in the series, the title is a more than appropriate indication of what Haigh has accomplished with nearly the piano alone. Robert Haigh has already proven his mastery of the melody through his solo albums and multiple aliases but on display for this album is his ability to play, and and I don't mean to merely play the piano, but play with us, the audience. Strange and Secret Things is like 17 very short films, all of which seem to make surprising plot twists early on and finish in unpredictable places.

Ben Chasny’s latest release takes a quietly melodic detour from the more challenging fare unleashed by his recent hexadic composing experiments, a gentle path that seems to have been willfully chosen as a modest counterbalance to the pervading darkness of the last year. I have some mixed feelings about that plan, as championing love and forgiveness sounds just fine to me, but Chasny occasionally errs a bit too much on the side of mellow, bucolic '60s/'70s folk rock for my taste. If that side had always been the Six Organs aesthetic, it is doubtful that I ever would have become a fan, as I am most drawn to Chasny's psych side, as well as his unconventional guitar heroics. As a one-off event, however, Burning The Threshold is quite a pleasant and disarming sincere album, offsetting occasional shades of classic Six Organs with a generous supply of surprisingly accessible hooks and melodies (as well as a bevy of talented guests).

Newly reissued in a much-expanded edition, Night Air was recorded in 1983, not long after Reininger left Tuxedomoon to try his hand at a solo career as an expat in Belgium. Described by Les Disques du Crepuscule as a classic (which it may very well be in some circles), Night Air is certainly a curiously moody and idiosyncratic bit of art-damaged pop music that is very much of its time: Reininger borrowed a bit of the gloom from post-punk and a bit of the larger-than-life pomp from big glossy pop to carve out his own strange niche of cosmopolitan, theatrical pop and noirish atmospheres. Night Air feels like Reininger attempted to forcibly distill late-night existential crises, hip European art scenes, and chain-smoking in coffee shops into something resembling a macabre, brooding, and vampiric Duran Duran. As such, a lot of Night Air’s appeal is of the nostalgic variety, but it is unquestionably a unique release and there are quite a few intriguing gems and rarities included in the extras. In fact, the bonus material is frequently better than the actual album.

After a major wind-down in their release rate as Emeralds (and a collection of busy solo careers), a new full-length album out of the blue was a bit of a shock but a very welcome one. Never ones to continue to re-tread old ground, Just to Feel Anything continues from where I last encountered them: an exciting live performance over a year ago where they had left most traces of their significant recording career behind.

I do not know what I find more surprising, the fact that there is a new Fontanelle album at all or that it has been released by Southern Lord (who have been largely at sea barring the occasional good release these last few years). What does not surprise me is how good Vitamin F is. Had this come out ten years ago, it would have made total sense but the large interval between this and Fontanelle’s previous releases has not diminished this album’s impact. This is superb, essential, and every other word that I need to use in order to get people to listen NOW.

Available once again (no clue if this one's limited) is one of my top-10 albums of the year. The Un-Releases was originally released earlier this year in an "official" bootleg teeny-tiny quantity which barely made it across the water to the USA. Now, through K in Olympia, Washington the disc should be easier to get a hold of.